There is a small islet off the north-east shore of Cadboro Bay in my hometown, Victoria, British Columbia, called Ellen Staines Isle. The story behind it is an interesting piece of historical trivia.

For some unknown reason the small island was mis-named, because Ellen Staines Isle was named to honour a lady by the name of Emma Staines, the wife of the Reverend Robert John Staines who arrived in the colony in March of 1849. Reverend Staines had been appointed as chaplain and schoolmaster for the Hudson’s Bay Company children at Fort Victoria, and Mrs. Staines was asked to teach the girls at the school while also acting as matron.

With the history books obviously paying more attention to her husband, little is really known about Emma Staines other than that she was of Irish birth and had met her husband in Gorey, County Wexford. The couple had married in 1846, three years before heading for Victoria on Vancouver Island.

However, Emma was a well-educated woman, proficient in music, French, Italian and German, and had been helping to operate a private school in France before her husband was called to his appointment on Vancouver Island. Early residents of the Fort described Mrs. Staines as being both “shrewish and snobbish” and she did not get along with Amelia Douglas, the wife of Chief Factor James Douglas, who considered her somewhat ‘uppity.’

No one, however, disputed Mrs. Staines’ teaching talents, and later Dr. Helmcken, the Fort doctor, praised her abilities even going so far as to say that “she was the best schoolmistress ever seen in Victoria” and that “she kept the girls in order, took them out, saw that they were properly and neatly dressed and carried themselves properly.” Mrs. Staines insisted all her students always paid attention to their deportment! James Douglas himself even wrote that “Mrs. Staines is invaluable and receives less assistance than she ought from her husband, who is rather lazy at times.”

One of the students at the Fort school, James Robert Anderson, later wrote a vivid description of Emma Staines depicting her as “an energetic person who really kept the school going.” He went on to say: “I can see her now in my mind’s eye, with a row of curls down each side of her angular face; by no means unprepossessing however, spare figure, clad in black, a lady undoubtedly, and then walking and holding out her skirts on each side and ordering the girls to follow her example.”

One amusing incident was long remembered about this rather austere woman proving she was not incapable of error. At one supper she hosted, by mistake she apparently used castor oil on the salad instead of salad oil, causing rather predictable and unpleasant results for all those who dined with her that night.

The Reverend Staines was eventually dismissed from his position with the Hudson’s Bay Company because of his opposition to the way Douglas ran things at the Fort. In 1854 he was on his way back to England with a petition against Douglas and his rule in the colony when the ship on which he was travelling floundered off Cape Flattery, and he was drowned at sea. Emma then sold all their assets and boarded for a while with another English family in Victoria.

Despite the obvious antagonism that had existed between Douglas and Staines, Douglas then offered to provide free passage back to England for Mrs. Staines, her adopted son and a servant, and Emma Staines took advantage of this offer, duly departing for the old country in January of 1855. Little is known of her after that.

It seems a pity, therefore, that whoever made the decision that Emma Staines was worthy enough to have a small islet named for her, made the mistake of calling her Ellen instead of Emma.